NEW AMERICANS AND OUR POLICIES
Illuminating anecdotes might be told of the storm and stress that often
lie beneath the surface of the immigrant’s experience from the time he
purchases his ticket in the old country until the gates at Ellis Island
close behind him and the process of assimilation begins. That he has so
often been left rudderless in strange seas forms a chapter in the history
of this “land of opportunity” that cannot be omitted.
[Illustration]
The confusion of the stranger, unable to speak the language and
encountering unfamiliar laws and institutions, often has tragic results.
Once in searching for a patient in a large tenement near the Bowery
I knocked at each door in turn. An Italian woman hesitatingly opened
one, no wider than to give me a glimpse of a slight creature obviously
stricken with fear. Her face brought instantly to my mind the famous
picture of the sorrowing mother. “Dolorosa!” I said. The tone and the
word sufficed, and she opened the door wide enough to let me enter. In a
corner of the room lay two children with marks of starvation upon them.
Laying my hat and bag upon the table, to indicate that I would return,
I flew to the nearest grocery for food, taking time, while my purchases
were being made ready, to telephone to a distinguished Italian upon whose
interest and sympathy I could rely to meet me at the tenement, that we
might learn the cause of this obvious distress.
My friend arrived before I had finished feeding the children, and to
him the little mother poured forth her tale. She, with three children,
had arrived some days before, to meet the husband who had preceded her
and had prepared the home for them. One _bambina_ was ill when they
reached port, and it was taken from her, why she could not explain. She
was allowed to land with the other two and join her husband, and the
following day, in answer to their frantic inquiries, they learned that
the child had been taken to a hospital and had died there. Then her
husband was arrested, and she, unacquainted with a single human being in
the city, found herself alone with two starving children, too frightened
to open the door or to venture upon the street. She thought her husband
was imprisoned somewhere nearby.
My friend and I went together to the Ludlow Street jail, and here a
curious thing occurred. We merely inquired for the prisoner; we asked no
questions. His cell door was opened and he was released. Later I learned
that he had been arrested because of failure to make a satisfactory
payment on a watch he was buying on the installment plan. There must have
been gross irregularity in the transaction, judging by the willingness
to release him and the fact that his creditor failed to appear against
him. It was hinted, at the time, that there was collusion between the
installment plan dealers and the prison officials.
A pleasanter story is that of the B⸺ family. One evening two neighborhood
women, shawls over their heads, called to ask if I would contribute to
a fund they were raising to furnish quarters for a family just arrived
from Ellis Island. When I expressed wonder that they should have been
permitted to land in a penniless condition the women shrugged their
shoulders in characteristic fashion and said, “Well, they’re here, and we
must do something.”
Not wishing to refuse, or to participate blindly, I asked for the
whereabouts of the man of the family. I found him in a basement, a very
dignified, gray-haired cobbler, between 40 and 45 years of age. When I
asked how it happened that the first step of his family in America should
be to claim help in this way he explained the complications in which they
had been involved. He had preceded his family to make a home for them,
and after some years had sent money for steamer tickets for them. When
they arrived at the frontier, owing to some technicality, they were sent
back. He had sent more money to defray the additional expenses; then
himself had been compelled to undergo an operation for appendicitis,
which took all he had hoarded to furnish the home. He was just out of the
hospital when wife and children arrived.
[Illustration]
Appreciating the importance of having the family begin life in their new
environment with dignity and self-respect, an offer was made to loan him
money if he would recall the women who were begging for him. Together we
figured out the minimum sum needed, and within an hour the twenty-five
dollars was in his hands and he had recalled the women with joy. He took
the loan without exaggerated protest or gratitude, merely saying: “As
there is a God in heaven you will not regret this.”
He was a skillful cobbler and the wife a good housekeeper, and in six
months they brought back the twenty-five dollars. It was pleasanter
not to think of the pinching in the household that made this prompt
repayment possible. Some time later he brought me forty dollars which
the family had saved, saying he knew it would give me pleasure to start
the savings-bank account which they would need for the education of the
children. The subsequent history of this family, like many another known
to us in Henry Street, shows the real contribution brought into American
life by immigrants of this character.
* * * * *
In discussions throughout the country of the problems of immigration
it is significant that few, if any, of the men and women who have had
extended opportunity for social contact with the foreigner favor a
further restriction of immigration.
The government’s policy regarding the immigrant has been negative,
concerned with exclusion and deportation, with the head tax and the
enforcement of treaties and international agreements. By our laws we are
protected from the pauper, the sick, and the vicious; but only within
recent years has a hearing been given to those who have asked that our
government assume an affirmative policy of protection, distribution, and
assimilation.
[Illustration]
The need of constructive social measures has long been indicated. The
planting of roots in the new soil can best be accomplished through an
intercourse with the immigrant in which the dignity of the individual
and of the family is recognized. Heroic measures may be necessary to
establish a satisfactory system of distribution, and these measures must
be based on a philosophic understanding of democracy. Among them should
be provision for giving instruction to the prospective immigrant in
regard to those laws, customs, or prohibitions with which he is liable to
come in contact, and also in regard to the industrial opportunities open
to him. Then, with competent medical examination at the port of departure
and humane consideration there and here, the tragedies now so frequent at
the port of arrival might be diminished, or even eliminated altogether.
In turn, the private banker, the employment agent, the ticket broker,
the lawyer, and the notary public have battened upon the helplessness
of the immigrant. Our experience has convinced us that in the interest
of the state itself the future citizens should be made to feel that
protection and fair treatment are accorded by the state. The greater
number of immigrants who come to us are adults for whose upbringing this
country has been at no expense. It would seem only just to give them
special protection during their first years in the country, to encourage
confidence in our institutions, and to promote assimilation. From an
academic point of view, it might be said that all institutions for the
citizen are available to the immigrant, but the statement carries with
it an implication of equal ability on the part of the latter to utilize
these institutions, and this is not borne out by the experience of those
familiar with actual conditions.
[Illustration]
Such thoughts as these lay back of an invitation to Governor Hughes to
dine and spend an evening at the settlement and there meet the colleagues
who could speak with authority on these matters.
The Governor left us armed with maps and documentary evidence. A few
months later the legislature authorized the creation of a commission to
“make full inquiry, examination, and investigation into the condition,
welfare, and industrial opportunities of aliens in the State of New
York.” Among its nine members were two women, Frances Kellor and myself.
Upon the recommendation of that commission the New York Bureau of
Industries and Immigration of the Department of Labor was created.[21]
Miss Kellor, the first woman to be head of a state bureau, became its
chief.
Pending the enactment of legislation, she and I, with a photographer and
a sympathetic companion interested in questions of labor, motored over
the state examining the construction camps of the barge canal (a state
contract), the camps connected with the city’s great new aqueduct, and
some of the canning establishments.
In the latter we found ample illustration of indifference on the part
of private employers. In the camps surrounding the canneries were
large numbers of idle children who should have been in school. The
local authorities were, perhaps not unnaturally, indisposed to enforce
the compulsory education law upon these children whose stay in the
community was to be a transient one. In the public work the New York
City contracts, with few exceptions, showed carefully thought-out and
standardized conditions for the men; but examination of the state
contracts showed that while elaborate provision had been made for the
expert handling of every other detail connected with the work, even to
the stabling of the mules, nowhere was any mention made of the men.
In a shack that held three tiers of bunks, occupied alternately by the
day and night shifts, with a cook-stove in a little clearing in the
middle, we found a homesick man, who chanced not to be on the works,
reading a book. When we engaged in conversation with him he pointed
contemptuously to the bunks and their dirty coverings, and said, “This
America! I show you Rome,” and produced from under his bed a photograph
of the Coliseum.
[Illustration]
The commission exposed many forms of exploitation of the immigrant,
and subsequent reports have corroborated its findings. Some safeguards
have now been established, and the reports of the Bureau of Industries
and Immigration in the first years of its existence bore interesting
testimony to its practical and social value. The significance of the
indifference of the state to its employees, as it appeared to the
investigators, was given publicity at the time, and roused comment and
discussion. I quote from it as follows:
“The state, as employer, alone determines the terms upon which its
new canal shall be built. It defines in great detail its standard of
materials and workmanship, but takes no thought for the workmen who
must operate in great transient groups. It does not leave to chance
the realization of its material standard, but sends inspectors to make
tests and provides a staff of engineers. It does leave to chance (in the
ignorance and cupidity of _padroni_) the quality and price of foods and
care of the men. It takes great care to prevent the freezing of cement,
but permits any kind of houses to be used for its laborers. It is wholly
indifferent as to how they are ventilated, lighted, or heated, how many
men sleep in them, or whether the sleeping quarters are also used for
cooking and eating and the bunks as cupboards. Neither does it care
whether the men can keep themselves or their clothes clean.
“The simplest standards which military history shows are essential in
handling such artificial bodies of people are grossly violated. Sanitary
conveniences are sometimes entirely omitted; the men drink any kind of
water they can obtain, and filthy grounds are of no evident concern.
The state does not inquire whether there are hospitals or physicians,
medicine, emergency aids, or anything of the kind. Notice is taken
of gambling, drunkenness, and immorality only when they impair the
efficiency of the men.... Men left alone in these miserable, uninspected
shacks, where vermin and dirt prevail ... must inevitably deteriorate.
The testimony of contractors themselves is that many of the laborers
become nomads, drifting from camp to camp, drinking, quarreling, and
averse to steady work.
“We commend this responsibility in all its phases to the various state
departments charged with education, health, letting of contracts,
payment of bills, supervision of highways and waterways, and protection
of laborers. We ask the state as employer to consider its gain from the
men at the most productive periods of their lives; we ask the state to
measure the influence of this life upon its future citizens during their
first years in the country when they are most receptive to impressions of
America.”[22]
Quite recently the Public Health Council of the New York State Department
of Health has adopted a sanitary code for all labor camps.
It is impossible to compute the sums that have been lost by immigrants
through fake banks, fake express companies, and irresponsible steamship
agencies. In New York State these were practically legislated out of
existence through the efforts of the Commission of Immigration of 1909
just referred to, yet in the winter of 1914-15 approximately $12,000,000
was lost on the lower East Side by the failure of private banks, sweeping
away the savings and capital of between 60,000 and 70,000 depositors.
Happily, the postal savings bank has come, and is already much used by
immigrants, incidentally keeping a large amount of money in this country.
In important centers the stations might be socialized to the still
greater advantage of the depositors and the service by having someone
assigned to interpret, to write addresses and give information. These
favors have been the bait held out to the timid stranger by the private
agencies.
[Illustration: A REGION OF OVERCROWDED HOMES]
Perhaps an even greater loss has come to us through the land-sale
deceptions. Farms cultivated in New York State are actually decreasing,
while the population increases. The census of 1900-1910 shows 4.9 per
cent. decrease of farms and 25.4 per cent. increase of population. Great
numbers of the immigrants are peasants, and land-hungry, and if there was
a policy throughout the states of registration of land for prospective
settlers, and if severe penalties attached to land frauds, I have little
doubt that valuable workers might be directed to the enormous areas that
need cultivation. “I am an agriculturist,” said a man who found his way
to the settlement to tell his troubles, “and I pull out nails in a box
factory in New York.” His entire family have followed him to the land
that he is now cultivating.
One winter a number of peasants from the Baltic provinces found
themselves stranded in New York. It was a period of unemployment, and
they could find no work. Unaccustomed to cities, they eagerly seized upon
an opportunity to leave New York. At the settlement, where they were
assembled, a state official told them of wood-cutters needed—in Herkimer
County, as I remember it. An advertisement called for forty men, and the
responsibility of the advertiser was vouched for by the local banker.
“Who can cut trees?” I asked. A shout went up from these countrymen—“Who
cannot cut trees?” _Forty_ to go? Everyone was ready. So we financed them
in their quest for work, and bade good-by to a radiant, grateful group.
_Alas! only four men were needed._ The contractor preferred to have a
larger number come, that he might make selection. And this is not an
exceptional instance. Ask the itinerant workers, the tramps even, how
much faith can be placed in the advertisements of “Hands Wanted” in the
East and in the West at the gathering of the crops.
The possibility of deflecting people to the land has been demonstrated
by Jewish societies in New York, and with proper support other
organizations interested in this phase of the immigrant’s welfare might
repeat their success. Such programmes of distribution, however, cannot
be carried out without effective co-operation from the people in the
rural regions, and assimilative processes will not be wholly successful
until the native-born American is freed from some of his prejudices and
provincialism.
An unsocial attitude in the country naturally drives the stranger to an
intensive colony life which accentuates the disadvantages of the barriers
he and we build up.
An experience in Westchester County illustrates this very well. We were
seeking lodgings for two intelligent and attractive young Italians
who were working on a dam at one of our settlement country places.
Incidentally, the work they were doing was quite beyond the powers of any
native workers in the vicinity of whom we could hear. We asked an old
native couple, squatters on some adjacent land, to rent an unoccupied
floor of their house to the two young men. The man, despite their
extremely indigent condition (the wife went to the almshouse a short time
after), absolutely refused, fearing the loss of social prestige if they
“lived in the house with dagoes.”
Perhaps, having little else, they were justified in clinging to their
social exclusiveness, but their action in this case illustrates the
almost universal attitude toward the immigrant, particularly the more
recent ones, and perhaps only those who have felt the isolation and
loneliness of the newcomer can comprehend its cruelty.
An educated Chinese merchant who once called at the settlement apologized
for the eagerness with which he accepted an offer to show him over the
house, explaining that although he had been thirty years in this country
ours was the first American home he had been invited to enter.
We need also to analyze the philosophy of much of the discrimination
against aliens in the matter of employment, and it is not pleasant to
remember that until recently a state employing an enormous number of
foreign workers forbade the bringing of suit by the non-resident family
of the alien, although he might have lost his life in an accident
through no fault of his own.
Scorn of the immigrant is not peculiar to our generation. A search of
old newspaper files will show that the arrival of great numbers of
immigrants of any one nationality has always been considered a problem.
In turn each nationality as it became established in the new country has
considered the next-comers a danger. The early history of Pennsylvania
records the hostility to the Germans—“fear dominated the minds of the
Colonists”—despite the fact that the German invaders were land-owning and
good farmers.
An Irish boy observed to one of our residents that on Easter Day he
intended to kill his little Jewish classmate. Having had long experience
of the vigorous language and kind heart of the young Celt, she paid
little attention to the threat, but was more startled when the soft-eyed
Francesco chimed in that he was also going to destroy him “because he
killed my Gawd.” “But,” said the teacher, “Christ was a Jew.” “Yes, I
know,” answered the young defender of the faith, “He was then, but He’s
an American now.”
Despite its absurdity, was not the boy’s conception an exaggerated
illustration of that surface patriotism which is almost universally
stimulated and out of which soul-deadening prejudices may grow—may take
root even in the public schools?
* * * * *
Great is our loss when a shallow Americanism is accepted by the newly
arrived immigrant, more particularly by the children, and their national
traditions and heroes are ruthlessly pushed aside. The young people have
usually to be urged by someone outside their own group to recognize the
importance and value of customs, and even of ethical teaching, when given
in a foreign language, or by old-world people with whom the new American
does not wish to be associated in the minds of his acquaintances. This
does not apply only to the recent immigrant, to whom his children often
hear contemptuous terms applied. I remember attending a public hearing
before the Department of Education of New York City at which Germans
vigorously urged the study of their native tongue in the public schools,
because of the impossibility of persuading their children to learn or use
the language by any other means than that of having it made a part of the
great American public school system.
It is difficult to find evidence of any serious effort on our part to
comprehend the mental reaction upon the immigrant of the American
institutions he encounters. Indeed, gathering up the story of the
immigrant, I sometimes wonder if he, like the fairies, does not hold up a
magic mirror wherein our social ethics are reflected, rather than his own
visage.
What we are to the immigrant in our civic, social, and ethical relations
is quite as important as what he is to us. We risk destruction of the
spirit—that element of life that makes it human—when we disregard our
neighbor’s personality.
* * * * *
Recent discussion of immigration bills focuses attention on two points
deemed of fundamental importance by the settlement groups.
Three Presidents have vetoed bills for the restriction of immigration
by means of a literacy test or by conditions that would virtually deny
the right of asylum for political refugees. Once, in addressing a
committee of the House on such proposed legislation, I protested against
a departure from our tradition and reminded the members of the committee
of the splendid Americans who would have been lost to this country had
the door been so closed upon them. A young physician of Polish parentage
followed, and his cultured diction and attractive appearance lent
emphasis to his story. “My father,” he said, “came an illiterate to this
country because the priest of his parish happened not to be interested in
education, not because my father was indifferent. He has struggled all
his life to give his children what he himself could never have, and has
worshiped the country that gave us opportunity.”
In his veto of the bill President Wilson admirably formulated his reasons
for opposing restriction of this character, and as these are exactly the
arguments upon which social workers have based their objections, I cannot
do better than quote him here:
“In two particulars of vital consequence this bill embodies a radical
departure from the traditional and long-established policy of this
country, a policy in which our people have conceived the very character
of their government to be expressed, the very mission and spirit of the
nation in respect of its relations to the peoples of the world outside
their borders. It seeks to all but close entirely the gates of asylum,
which have always been open to those who could find nowhere else the
right and opportunity of constitutional agitation for what they conceived
to be the natural and inalienable rights of men, and it excludes those
to whom the opportunities of elementary education have been denied
without regard to their character, their purposes, or their natural
capacity.”
* * * * *
The immigrant brings in a steady stream of new life and new blood to
the nation. The unskilled have made possible the construction of great
engineering works, have helped to build bridges and roadways above
and under ground. The number of skilled artisans and craftsmen among
immigrants and the contribution they make to the cultural side of our
national life are too rarely emphasized. Alas for our educational system!
we must still look abroad for the expert cabinet-maker or stone-carver,
the weaver of tapestry, or the artistic worker in metals, precious or
base.
[Illustration]
In another place I have spoken of the rise of certain needle trades from
those of sweaters and sweaters’ victims to a standardized industry,
with an output estimated at hundreds of millions yearly. The industry
of cloak- and suit-making has been to a large extent developed by the
immigrants themselves. When the stranger looks upon the loft buildings
in other parts of the city, gigantic beehives with the swarms of workers
going in and out, he seldom comprehends that great wealth has been
created for the community by these humble workers.
The man who now stands at the gates of Ellis Island turns his socially
trained mind toward the development of methods for the protection and
assimilation of the immigrant after the gates have closed upon him. But
the best conceived plans of this Commissioner of Immigration and others
who have long studied the question will be fruitless unless, throughout
the country, an intelligent and respectful attitude toward the stranger
is sedulously cultivated.
In the early glow of our enthusiasm, when we were first brought in
contact with the immigrant, we dreamed of making his coming of age—his
admission to citizenship—something of a rite. Many who come here to
escape persecution or the hardships suffered under a militaristic
government idealize America. They bring an enthusiasm for our
institutions that would make it natural to regard admission to the rights
and responsibilities of citizenship with seriousness. Years ago we urged
the use of school buildings, that registration and the casting of the
ballot might be dignified by formal surroundings. This has been done in
several cities, although not yet in New York.
* * * * *
The foreign press, particularly the Yiddish, has a distinct Americanizing
influence. Many adults never learn the new language and, indeed,
acquire here the habit of newspaper-reading. The history of the United
States, biographies of George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and other
distinguished Americans appear in the pages of these papers, and one
Italian daily published serially the Constitution of the United States.
Effective, too, as an educational and assimilating measure have been the
lectures in foreign languages conducted for many years by the Educational
Alliance on East Broadway and by the various settlements, and included,
for some years past, in the evening courses of the Department of
Education.
* * * * *
In our neighborhood the physical changes of the last twenty years have
been great. Since that first disturbing walk with the little girl to
the rear tenement on Ludlow Street asphalt has replaced unclean, rough
pavements; beautiful school buildings (some the finest in the world) have
been erected; streets have been altered, and rows of houses demolished to
make room for new bridges and small parks. Subway tubes take the working
population to scattered parts of the greater city; piers have been built
for recreation purposes, and a chain of small free libraries of beautiful
design. A Tenement House Department has been created, charged with
supervision and enforcement of the laws regulating the housing of 80 per
cent. of the city’s population, and so far assaults upon this protective
legislation have been repulsed, despite the tireless lobby of the owners
year after year.
[Illustration: AT ELLIS ISLAND
There is a stream of inflowing life]
As our neighbors have prospered many have moved to quarters where they
find better houses, less congestion, more bathtubs; but an enormous
working population still finds occupation in the lower part of the city.
Carfare is an expense, and time spent in overcrowded cars, which scarcely
afford standing-room, adds to the exhaustion of the long day, and these
considerations keep many near the workshop. Despite the exodus, we still
remain an overcrowded region of overcrowded homes. Through the tenements
there is a stream of inflowing as well as outflowing life. The newcomer
finds a lodging-place most readily in this vicinity, and the East Side is
the shore of the harbor.
* * * * *
The settlements have been before the public long enough to have lost
the glamour of moral adventure that was associated with their early
days. Many who were identified with them then have steadfastly remained,
although realizing, as one of them has said, that high purpose has often
been mocked by petty achievement.
A characteristic service of the settlement to the public grows out of its
opportunities for creating and informing public opinion. Its flexibility
as an instrument makes it pliant to the essential demands made upon it;
uncommitted to a fixed programme, it can move with the times.
Out of the enthusiasms and out of the sympathies of those who come to
it, though they be sometimes crude and formless, a force is created that
makes for progress. For these, as well as for the helpless and ignorant
who seek aid and counsel, the settlement performs a function.
The visitors who come from all parts of the world and exchange views and
experiences prove how absurd are frontiers between honest-thinking men
and women of different nationalities or different classes. Human interest
and passion for human progress break down barriers centuries old. They
form a tie that binds closer than any conventional relationship.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES
[1] The “Lodge” doctor is the physician provided by a mutual benefit
society or “Lodge” to attend its members.—THE AUTHOR.
[2] “Visiting Nursing in the United States,” by Y. G. Waters (Charities
Publication Committee).
[3] The National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis
in its report for 1915 states that the tuberculosis death rate in the
registration area of the United States has declined from 167.7 in 1905
to 127.7 in 1913 per 100,000 population; a net saving to this country of
over 200,000 lives from this one disease.
[4] “The Vocational Guidance of Youth,” by Meyer Bloomfield (Houghton
Mifflin Co.).
[5] Because of economic conditions in New York during the winter of 1915
and the compulsory idleness of many unskilled workers, the Scholarship
Committee of the Henry Street Settlement, among other efforts for relief,
rented a loft in a building near a trade school, and thus made it
possible for 160 untrained girls to receive technical instruction, the
Board of Education providing teachers and equipment.—THE AUTHOR.
[6] That the ephemeral character of work available for children of
fourteen to sixteen years of age is not peculiar to New York City is
shown by the following figures from the report of the Maryland Bureau of
Statistics for the year 1914. In Maryland, working papers are issued for
each separate employment. The number of original applications in one year
was 3,580 and the total of subsequent applications, 4,437. Of the 3,580
children 2,006 came back a second time, 1,036 a third time, 561 a fourth,
363 a fifth, 194 a sixth, 116 a seventh, 53 an eighth, 29 a ninth, 18 a
tenth, and one child came back for the eighteenth time in a twelvemonth,
for working papers. Many of the children told stories of long periods of
idleness between employments.—THE AUTHOR.
[7] While writing this we learn that a child attending a settlement club
has been involved in practices that indicate a perversion, but she cannot
properly be included in the above classification because of her extreme
youth.—THE AUTHOR.
[8] We have been popularly known as the Nurses’ Settlement, but our
corporate name is The Henry Street Settlement.—THE AUTHOR.
[9] Hat and coat checked without charge.
[10] January 22, 1905.
[11] U. S. Commissioner S. M. Hitchcock’s decision, delivered March 30,
1909.
[12] Now published, with considerable additions, as “Memoirs of a
Revolutionist” (Houghton Mifflin Co.).
[13] See “The Life Story of a Russian Exile,” by Marie Suldoff (The
Century Co.).
[14] See the sympathetic sketch, “Katharine Breshkovsky,” by Ernest Poole
(Charles H. Kerr & Co., Chicago).
[15] Report of the Federal Bureau of Education for 1913 shows 500 of
these schools in New York City.
[16] See “History of Socialism in the United States,” by Morris Hillquit
(Funk and Wagnalls).
[17] The early Hebrews possessed a few mystery plays, “The Sale of
Joseph,” “Esther and Haman,” and “David and Goliath,” and at the Jewish
carnival of Purim (Feast of Esther) merrymakers went from house to house
giving performances of song and mimicry, but the Yiddish theater is new
and was first introduced in Rumania not more than thirty-five years ago.
Transplanted to Russia, the actors, said to have been selected from the
original strolling companies, played a brilliant brief part until, under
government order, the Yiddish theaters were closed there.
[18] Dr. Edward McGlynn was suspended in 1884 under charge of advocacy of
Henry George and of holding opinions regarding the rights of property not
in accord with Catholic teaching, and later excommunicated. He organized
the famous Anti-Poverty Society in 1887. In 1892 he was reinstated, his
position being judged not contrary to the doctrine of the Church as
confirmed by the Encyclical _Rerum Novarum_ issued by Leo XIII on May 15,
1891.
[19] See reports and bulletins of the Joint Board of Sanitary Control
(Dr. George Price, Director), also Bulletins Nos. 98. 144, 145, and 146
of the U. S. Department of Labor, and “Sanitary Control of an Industry by
Itself,” by L. D. Wald, in the report of the International Congress of
Hygiene and Demography, 1913.
[20] In August, 1915, the protocol was succeeded by a time agreement of
two years. This agreement contains the main principles of the protocol,
with some modifications in the machinery of adjustment.
[21] Report of Commission on Immigration of the State of New York
transmitted to the legislature in April, 1909.
[22] “The Construction Camps of the People,” by Lillian D. Wald and
Frances A. Kellor (_The Survey_, January 1, 1910).
INDEX
Adams, Maude, 87
Adolescence, problems of, and settlement work, 170-179, 189-199
Anarchism, 274-279
Archer, William, 272
Bellevue Hospital, 28, 59
Bialystok massacre, 230
Breshkovsky, Katharine, 238-248
Brewster, Mary, 8, 10, 16, 45, 48, 78, 113
Budget of a working-girl, 194;
her “two jobs,” 211
Cafés, bookshops, and saloons, 273-275
Child Hygiene, Bureau of, 53, 57, 59
_Child labor_:
Children who work, 135-151;
conditions in New York City, 135-137,
—in Pennsylvania and the South, 144, 145;
National Committee on, 144, 146;
New York Committee on, 137, 144, 148, 150;
newsboys, 146-149;
obstacles to measures for protection of children, 149;
scholarships to aid children, 138-142;
statistics for Greater New York, 158;
sweatshops and children, 153-156;
typical employment record, 143;
Washington Conference on, 146
Clubs and classes in the settlement, 179-184
Columbia University creates Department of Nursing and Health, 64
Committee of Fifteen (New York), inquiry of, 174
Comte, 274
Continuation Schools, necessary for young workers, 160
Convalescents, country house for, 88
Crosby, Ernest, 234, 235, 280
Davis, Katherine, 268
_Defectives_:
Responsibility of society for, 122;
special classes instituted, 117-120
De Leon, Daniel, 262
Diseases of children and home treatment, 38-40
Dock, L. L., 266
Doukhobors, the, 233-235
_Drama_:
As a social force, 270-273;
dramatic instinct of Jewish child, 184;
marionette theater, 272;
Neighborhood Playhouse, 185;
pageants and plays, 184-187, 226;
Yiddish plays, 270-272
Ducey, Father, 280
Dunsany, Lord, 188
_Education_:
Bureau of vocational guidance proposed, 160;
continuation schools necessary, 160;
educational ideals and the settlement, 133;
effects of disorganized tenement life on, 110-113;
Federal Children’s Bureau, 57, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168;
foreign press as Americanizing influence, 307;
hardships endured for, 99-103;
institutional life and the child, 124-132;
necessity for early care and training, 133;
responsibility for defectives, 122;
scholarships, 138, 141, 150;
special training for defectives instituted, 117-120;
study-rooms at the settlement, 103
(_see also_ Public Schools)
Educational Alliance, The, 308
Empress of Austria, assassination of, 275
Factory law (New York) amended, 210
Farrell, Elizabeth, 117, 120
Federal Children’s Bureau, 57, 163, 165, 166, 167, 168
Forward Association, The, 264
Gapon, Father, 230
Gershuni, 238
Gordin, Jacob, 270, 271
Greeks of New York give “Ajax,” 226
_Henry Street_:
Instruction in home nursing begun in old building on, 3;
its links with city’s past, 169;
physical changes of twenty years, 308
Home and School Visitor, The, 110
_Hospitals_:
Children’s diseases and, 38-40;
first school for midwives in Bellevue, 59;
large numbers of city sick unable to avail themselves of, 28
Housekeeping centers, 108, 109
Hughes, Charles Evans, 259, 293
Ibsen, Henrik, 188, 272
Illiteracy, 113, 114
_Immigrants_:
Bureau of Industries and Immigration created, 293;
conditions of, in labor camps, 294-297;
contributions of, to national life, 305, 306;
dangers and early trials of, 286-293;
discrimination against, 300-302;
further restriction of immigration contrary to American
institutions, 290, 304;
land and the, 298-300;
positive governmental action and constructive social measures
needed, 291;
postal savings banks and, 298
_Industrial conditions_:
Programmes of betterment, 25;
unemployment in 1893-1894, 17;
wretched conditions impress Henry Street workers from the
beginning, 25;
youth and trades unions, 201-215
(_see also_ Child Labor and Sweatshops)
Industrial Workers of the World, 278
_Infant mortality_:
Federal Children’s Bureau report on, 57;
social disease, 54
Institutional life, disadvantages of, for children, 124-132
_Italians_:
Ancient customs preserved among, 69;
celebration of saints’ days, 252;
daily newspaper publishes Constitution, 308;
marionette theaters, 272;
preyed upon by quack doctors, 37;
tragic experience of Italian immigrant, 286-288
“Jephthah’s Daughter,” 186
_Jews_:
Cycle of Hebrew festivals at Henry Street, 184;
difficulties of, in complex new world, 252-254;
dramatic instinct of Jewish child, 184;
Talmud-Torah Schools and Chedorim, 253;
value put upon education by, 97-100;
wedding customs, 216-219;
Yiddish plays, 270-272;
Yiddish press, 307;
Zionism, 254
Kant, 274
Kelley, Florence, 144
Kellor, Frances, 293, 294
Kennan, George, 238, 239
Kindness of poor to each other, 17-20, 70
Kishineff massacre, 229
Knights of Labor, 263, 281
Kropotkin, Prince, 222, 234, 235, 238, 276
Land, The, and the immigrant, 298-300
Lathrop, Julia, 166
Lawrence strike, The, 278, 279
Le Moyne, Sarah Cowell, 188
Life insurance and nursing service, 62
Literacy test for immigrants, 304, 305
Lowell, Josephine Shaw, 14
McGlynn, Edward, 280
McRae, Mrs., 13-17
Maude, Aylmer, 233
Mazzini, 208
_Medical etiquette_:
And nursing service, 30-36;
its analogies with the “closed shop,” 34
Metropolitan Museum of Art, petition for Sunday opening of, 80
Midwives, 57-60
Milk stations, 55, 56
Morbidity, statistics of, 37, 38
Murphy, Edgar Gardner, 144
National Organization for Public Health Nursing, 64
National Playground Association, 81
_Negroes_:
“Lincoln House,” 162;
peculiar problems of, 162, 163;
restricted opportunities for, in industry, 162
Neighborhood Playhouse, The, 185
_Nursing service_:
Co-operation with Board of Health, 45;
co-ordination with educational institutions, 63;
Department of Nursing and Health at Columbia University, 64;
development of, throughout country, 44, 60;
division into districts, 42;
effect of new basis, 27, 28;
etiquette of, 27;
honored by Mt. Holyoke degree, 65;
life insurance company and, 62;
new era in development of, 60, 61;
nurses for public schools, 51-53;
post-graduate training in settlement, 63;
principles of, 26, 27, 29;
professional etiquette and, 30-36;
Public Health Nursing, division of, created in New York State, 46
—department of, in Columbia University, 64
—National Organization for, 64;
staff of settlement increased, 41, 42
Outdoor Recreation League, 85, 86
Pageants, festas, and street dances, 184, 214, 215, 226, 252
Picnics and day parties, 77-79, 89
Play, children and, 66-96
_Playgrounds_:
In Henry Street Settlement’s back yard, 81-84;
movement throughout country in favor of, 96;
Outdoor Recreation League, 85, 86;
playgrounds “at no matter what cost,” 96;
public schools used for, 87;
Seward Park, 86
Postal savings banks and the immigrant, 298
Pouren, Jan, 236-238
Protocol established in cloakmakers’ strike, 284, 285
Prudhon, 276
Public Health Nursing, division of, created in Columbia University, 64;
in New York State, 46;
National Organization for, 64
_Public schools_:
Cooking instruction in, 107;
doctors appointed for, 49-51;
first class for ungraded pupils in, 117-120;
infectious diseases and, 46-53;
opened as recreation centers, 87;
Penny Lunches for, 109;
responsibility for defectives, 114-123;
settlement seeks to co-operate with and supplement, 105;
stronghold of democracy, 133;
trachoma in, 50;
trained nurses in, 51-53
Quack doctors and the poor, 36, 37
_Red Cross_ (_American_):
An agency providing “moral equivalents for war,” 61;
Department of Town and Country Nursing, 61
Riis, Jacob, 67
Roosevelt, Theodore, 125, 164, 166, 236, 237
_Russian freedom_:
Case of Jan Pouren, 236-238;
Friends of, in New York, 235;
Katharine Breshkovsky, 238-248;
Russian visitors at Henry Street, 231-233;
Russia’s struggle our struggle, 248;
spiritual force of, on East Side, 229;
woman suffrage and, 268
Russian Revolution, 229, 230;
New York Committee, 231, 236
_Scholarships for children who work_:
“Alva Scholarship,” 150;
chart showing statistics of, 141;
Henry Street system, 138;
New York Child Labor Committee Scholarship, 150
_Settlements_:
Adherents of all creeds work together in, 254;
birth of idea, 2;
developments and opportunities for service, 309, 310;
College Settlement (New York), 10;
Union Settlement, 58;
University Settlement, 137
Sex hygiene, instruction in, 198
Shaw, George Bernard, 188
“Shepherd, The,” 185
Shirt-waist strike, The, 209, 210
“Silver Box,” The, 185
_Social forces_:
Drama, 270-273;
politics, 255-272;
radicalism, 276-279;
religion, 249-254;
socialism, 262-266;
social reform, 279-285;
woman suffrage, 266-269
_Social halls and meeting-places_:
Cafés, bookshops, and saloons, 273-275;
Clinton Hall, 185, 225, 227, 260;
need for, 219;
Social Halls Association, 225, 226
Socialist movement in America, 262-266
Social Reform Club, 279
Southern Educational Conference, 104
Spahr, Charles B., 280
Spinoza, 274
“Spoken Newspaper, The,” 263
Study-rooms and libraries in the settlement, 103, 104
Sukloff, Marie, 238
Summer scenes on the East Side, 69-71
_Sweatshops_:
Conditions in, 152-155, 281;
conferences on, 282;
protocol of 1910, 284;
restriction of, 157-158
Taft, William Howard, 166
Tammany Hall, 256-258
Terry, Ellen, 188
Thoreau, Henry D., 277
Tolerance, religious, instances of, 21-23
Tolstoi, Leo, 233-235, 276
_Trades unions_:
Difficulty of organizing women and girls, 203;
early organizations of girl workers, 203-206;
shirt-waist strike, 209;
Women’s Trade Union League, 206, 207;
Youth and, 201-215
Triangle fire and investigation, 208, 209, 212
Tschaikowsky, N., 238, 268
Tuberculosis, system of care and instruction of patients, 53, 54
Vacation houses and camps, 90-94
Vocational Guidance and Industrial Supervision, proposed Bureau of, 160
Waring, Colonel, 4
Wedding customs, 216-219
White House Conference on Children, 125
“Whither,” by Morris Rosenfeld, 200
Whitman, Walt, 276
Widows’ pensions, the first in Henry Street, 124
Wilson, Woodrow, 305
Woman suffrage, 266-269
Women’s Trade Union League, 206, 207